How Capitec took over South Africa
Gerrie Fourie has taken Capitec to new heights since taking over as CEO in 2014, and his success strategy can be broken down into four parts.
In 2000, Michiel Le Roux approached Gerrie Fourie to join Capitec Bank. He served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) until he became CEO on 1 January 2014.
When Capitec was founded in 2001, it focussed primarily on 1-month lending. At the time, it only had 55 branches and 25,000 clients.
Under Fourie’s leadership, Capitec has become one of the most formidable banks in the country, with around 23 million clients and nearly 900 branches.
“If you look at the 24 years, that same recipe is still there,” Fourie said on the Business Talk show.
“We still evaluate everything on those four fundamentals: affordability, accessibility, service and simplicity.”
Similarly, Fourie explained on the Kaya Biz podcast that Capitec’s “winning formula” can also be boiled down to four core points.
Fourie said the first and most important point is client obsession. This boils down to really understanding the client and delivering on their needs.
He explained that bankers normally look at risk, and then clients. However, Capitec regards itself as a retailer, which means it looks at the client first and risk second.
Interestingly, when Fourie joined Capitec, he had very little experience in banking.
He started his career at the Stellenbosch Farmers Winery in the financial planning division, which was followed by five years managing the winery’s sales, marketing, production, and distribution.
In the end, his lack of banking experience was a much bigger advantage than he realised at first.
“Being in the liquor industry, I spent quite a lot of time in during that period in townships, in shebeens, seeing how we can open those channels,” he said.
“So, we had a very good understanding of the total South African market and what the South African Market needed.”
This client focus is also reflected in the number of people Capitec caters to since its business plan has been to bank 95% of South Africans since the start.

“The second one is to be really focused. I’ve always said we need to get to a 30% market share before you bring out a new product,” Fourie said.
“So really, when you do something, do it well and really capture the market.”
Otherwise, he explained, you will have a lot of products without dominating the market.
“That brings a big discipline in to go in and make certain that you are dominant in that market share, and you focus on that product, and you optimise that product, and you optimise that processes before you go on.”
Although saying no to business opportunities until they got that 20%-30% market share was very difficult, it was a key part of Capitec’s recipe for success.
The third element, Fourie said, is agility – “the ability to move forward”.
“The one thing we’ve learned over the years is that you need to be agile, you need to be flexible, you need to be adaptive, but you need to stick to your core business.”
This also related to the fourth and final part of Fourie’s winning formula: innovation.
“In my life, I never wanted to become a CEO. My passion was to be an entrepreneur and to create something, build businesses, grow businesses, enlarge businesses.”
However, when Le Roux asked Fourie to join the bank, his plan was to go into the retail business side and do banking completely differently.
It was this new approach to banking that excited Fourie and convinced him to come on board.
“If you really think about banking, it is all about: credit, transact, save, and insure. Those are the four core elements.”
“But how do you take those, and you are doing things differently? You’re innovative.”

According to Fourie, Capitec’s motto is: “How do we think completely differently and add value to our clients?”
“I think the first 12 years was all about establishing the brand and making certain that people understand the brand.”
The next 10 years were all about becoming digital. However, instead of focusing all of its attention on becoming a digital bank, Capitec did things differently and focussed on growing its digital offering while also maintaining a strong branch presence.
Over the past five years, the bank has leveraged the best available technology and data-driven insights to enhance its offerings.
Since 2020, Capitec has adopted top-tier platforms like Microsoft, AWS, and Salesforce, enabling scalability and delivering value to clients.
Development in terms of their app and value-added service segment has been particularly important.
Fourie explained that their goal with the Capitec banking app is to create a “one-stop shop” where the client can access “all financial services”.
Notably, the bank hasn’t raised app transaction fees in six years, thanks to technological advancements and economies of scale.
Data also plays a central role, with over 2.5 trillion client data points used to optimise services and create value.
As an increasing number of clients switch from cash to digital transactions, the bank has even more data that they can use to understand their clients.
“We can then provide credit in a responsible manner and bring in new products like purpose lending,” Fourie said.
Using the power of AI, Capitec has also been able to accelerate time-to-market and improve client experiences.
Looking ahead, Fourie noted that Capitec’s five-year strategy has been set.
They will predominantly focus on optimising their client base, especially on the business banking side.
While Capitec’s primary focus for the next few years is not to build its international presence, over time “the aspiration is to make certain that Capitec becomes a global brand.”
Comments